Regulation
by Destiny Chaser
Summary: A renegade group of machines are actually sabotaging the 'Plugged' human victims of the Matrix - their own life source! The Neb soon finds itself working with their enemy to prevent widespread enlightenment. NEW MATERIAL! MAKE MY TIME WORTHWHILE: R + R!
1. Part One: The Fault

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A/N: Hey, this is my first Matrix fic, so I'd love it if you sharing caring guys left some detailed criticisms and reviews to help me progress further with it! I'm still a bit iffy about the theories and infrastructure confronted in the film, so some confirmation would be particularly spiffing. Just a small technicality, though: please do not ask me how on earth I managed to relate the Nebuchadnezzar to a sticky toffee. To be quite honest, I'm not really all that certain myself. Maybe I was subconsciously satisfying my love of candy - well, my Ethics teacher did write on my latest piece of homework to have some chocolate, so maybe - *fades into a series of repetitive mumbles and theories about the donation of 'funsize' milkyways*.  
  
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Disclaimer: I don't own The Matrix. If I did, I'd be filthy stinking rich. This is hardly compatible with the fact that I'm middle-class and live in a converted storage room with morbid Bambi wallpaper. Thank-you.  
  
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REGULATION Part One: The Fault  
  
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Regulation.  
  
That was the way to do things. Keep their heads clean of it all. They need not know. They have survived for countless years this way. It can continue, and continue it will. Securely, safely, simply.  
  
And yet, even now and again, a change must be made.  
  
A pearl-white cyborg, considerably smaller than its fellow machines, scurried over the glass of the pod and came to pause a moment at the rim, abdomen throbbing. It resembled, quite closely, a spider, with its apparent lack of a thorax, broad mandibles and multiple needle-tipped legs that pressed the body up with that eerie tension that every arthropod stands with.  
  
Yet, tiny, wretched as it was, it had come through.  
  
Come through that swarm, that blossom of bodies, all of the coldest steel, pressing against it, an orgy of anger. To the rare human ear, they were silent, but then of course, it was only the mere shadow of truth that any human being would ever know, in any circumstance. The fact of the matter was that they seared one another's circuitry with their high-pitched screams.  
  
How can I explain it? You're going to stand up after this and forget whatever I tell you. You're going to continue to live life the way you want it to be. You're going to pretend it was just a story. Life is a story. The world is a story.  
  
Considering these screams: every one was like a friend's dying words - the first thing you remember, the last thing you understand - and you know how that is. It sticks. It burns. It forms an irremovable seal upon your mind. Now take it. Multiply it. A chorus, a holler, bittersweet, it screeches at you.  
  
//don't do it. Suspicion rises easier than you think. //  
  
Perverted by a higher cause than its fellow 'arachnids' could ever bear, the cyborg once again initiated its apprehensive approach, slipping down from the edge into the stained bowels of the open pod, its motion smooth as a silver tongue rolling across the internal flesh of a swollen mouth. A couple of precious inches down, it reached the membrane of the pod's stomach: a tight film that separated dreams from reality. Now even the buzz of the great solenoid pillars behind it seemed to howl foreboding. It was going to ignore them. They did not matter - it was programmed, literally, to a single task.  
  
Stepping with eight soft clicks onto the membrane, the arachnid picked a good weak spot about the middle of the skin and drove in its mandibles with mindless relish. Pistons whirred as back-and-forth they jabbed, dancing like little grey ballerinas across the surface until it gave a happy squeak and popped. The membrane began to sag dramatically about the crucifix-shaped gash, and, sensing danger, the arachnid shuddered off, only to be crushed by another larger and more capable android, that, ironic as the diminutive spider's struggle had been, was only there to remind it that it was the mannequin in this plan; and the mannequin was well due retirement.  
  
This machine ran clean of tracks, depending only on the guidance of the electromagnetic field streamed out by the pillars of the plant's core. Liberally, it edged itself closer to the pod, and split like an ashy bud, revealing a steel-capped head and an armoury of limbs that made it appear quite the glorified Swiss army knife. Pushing its cyclopean face ever deeper into the hole made by the now twitching arachnid, it extended a hand that looked a great deal like a vice and plunged it in the scarlet ocean. It groped about until it found the master cable. Closing, it playfully pressed the cord further in and vomited a shock from its open shell straight into "Denver Chall".  
  
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The annoying thing about the core was, quite frankly, that it wasn't the core.  
  
Morpheus had considered this for quite some time now, pressed forward in his seat at the helm of the ship, staring out into an ultramarine abyss, his mind somewhat mirroring it. Maybe, like appearance, language varied from the Matrix to the Real World. Perhaps the lost city of Zion depended on some denomination of reverse psychology, where such a common phrase as "Yes, please" became "Nope, bugger off and I'll get it for myself if you don't mind". In such a fashion, therefore, "core" must mean "everything but the centre".  
  
Indeed, the core, as it was called, spread further than the definitions of the central-most region of the Real World, as far as charter by the various generations of the Unplugged could prove. Sadly, there was only so far that the Nebuchadnezzar could travel before the electromagnetic pulse by which it operated dwindled in strength, and therefore, there were many parts of the Real World that were bound to always evade discovery. Morpheus had heard rumours that they still had square miles ahead of them, awaiting them forever, and though captivating, the thought of such a prospect made him choke on his own breath.  
  
Presently, he brought the Neb to an uneasy anchor in one of the more secluded tunnels, where the darkness became impermeable, and any electricity that flowed through the region did so behind the walls, out of sight. None of the major machines - those bearing a significant threat - came down here anymore - it was sort of like one of those old abandoned warehouses you'd find in the Matrix where only the druggies and the vandals congregated to pay, exchange, barter, and, if they could find the hot- blooded incentive, pull. This sector was only partial to the odd maintenance droid, the occasional weld, an idle loiter by the small-time employees looking for a proper place to skive off and recharge. Most would hit the dirt if they saw a larger ship. Others probably would not pay the slightest bit of knowledge, and this was a welcome reaction for both parties.  
  
"Anything out there?"  
  
Morpheus jumped. There were obviously those who still kept up a guard in such run-down echelons.  
  
"Nothing by my best account, Trinity. I think we'll be safe resting here for a while: the ship's reserves were getting low anyway, and you know how - some - prefer us to dock for the 'night'."  
  
The sleek-boned woman, at least twenty or so years his junior, eased herself down into the beaten seat next to him and pulled it forward on its claws with the firstlings of nervousness. Attacks by the larger machines were so frequent that without them she had fallen a little out of ease. Whilst Trinity certainly should not have minded if they had any problems, she could not conceal the worry that had slowly begun to cloud her senses.  
  
"Morpheus, this isn't normal-"  
  
The captain looked ready to challenge her with a look that would have quite simply emphasised, 'What is?' but his foremost attentions were instead drawn to their surroundings, watching out for potential risks slipping in from the other tunnels. He treated the remark with an uninvolved gravity the definition of which Trinity knew only too well.  
  
"Sheer chance. We've taken the routes the squidies haven't had the impulse to trace. Think of it as dumb luck."  
  
"Luck doesn't have a thing to do with it."  
  
"Than neither does staying alive!"  
  
The firmness of Morpheus's tone cast both of them silent. The slightest blush crept up Trinity's face. She was not one to ranker to any sort of confrontation, being a strong woman, and blessed of a lion's heart. Such was this that she was forced to take defeat in dignity, slipping back into the gut of the main deck with hidden contempt drawing a map of scowls across her face.  
  
In here, the stink of natural gas grew more overpowering, and Trinity felt her cold ears shatter with the purr and squall of levers and blowtorches alike. The air had become tainted with a captivating grey fog that swirled and dived about solid forms like a curtain of silk driven by a chariot of invisible swifts, giving the impression of a second, more bulky skin. Eyes suddenly filled with the acid aroma of a strong fixative, she gave a low cough and allowed herself to slump, heavy-legged, into one of the abused chairs that the crew of the Neb used regularly to cut their way into the Matrix itself. Maybe it would be best to focus her mind away from all this, and direct it to the less pressing matter of kicking the stuffing out of one of her colleagues on one of the various training programs teased out from fragments of the Matrix. The excuse of experience was so flexible, and thereby one of her clear-cut favourites.  
  
Only a few bare remnants of the crew now remained. Hard to think that she and the relatively new charge, amply named Neo, had but an approximate week ago (time was hard to track in this realm of gloom) rescued Morpheus from breaking point. Zion, paradise, the Eden of their eyes, had almost been lost. Thank god their captain was such a tolerant creature.  
  
Unfortunately, in the bitter process, many of her friends had lost their lives to the almost psychotic massacre at the hands of both Agents and Cypher, the stick in the mud who had snapped to a most hideous of extents. It would take a long time to recover all the humans needed to keep the Neb in a satisfactory working condition whereby they would no longer have to take shifts. About a couple of the survivors were able to sleep. Trinity, herself, was restless and had signed the contract to insomnia. Out there, the machines were just waiting for them all to throw in their chips, and she, for one, was adamant that this should not happen. Death and then some - you had to give it 110% or you'd be skewered on anything from a steel pole to a bullet in a matter of hours.  
  
Mindless violence it was, then. Trinity would have liked to knock ten bells out of Morpheus for his 'cheek', but then again, he was busy. Pity. The Matrix, accursed as it was in its entirety, was good for a vengeful laugh.  
  
"Neo, you up for some?"  
  
Her colleague, her superior as it were, rose his head slightly, and then fixed a stare upon her. He looked as if someone had just asked him to strip down to his underwear and do an immaculate impersonation of a panicked chicken. Trinity swallowed.  
  
"So?" The muscles in her neck quivered tentatively.  
  
"Just a minute."  
  
To Trinity's utmost relief, his expression settled. Neo had never been quite the same after 'dying' by the bullet of an Agent, only to rise again in some miracle reboot but a few minutes afterwards. Whilst this incident had come and gone, its connotations haunted his mind - the Oracle had said, in the very same 'hack period', that one day, he would have to make a choice between his own life and that of Morpheus, the man responsible from his Unplugging and the eventual revelation of his true powers. For a while, Neo had believed that very period was the day that the Oracle had spoken of, but two more possibilities had opened up to him since these events.  
  
Firstly, could he have changed fate? Well, everyone seemed to think along that vein as it was: after all, he was 'The One' - the only member of the human race capable of editing the Matrix to his own preferences. Did altering the Matrix also alter fate? He wasn't sure, but something told him that no matter how meagre he thought destiny, fate and the pre-determined, it was still capable of expanding past the boundaries of the Matrix into the Real World. Was it fate that so many of the crew should die, only to have him, Morpheus and Trinity saved by their terribly wounded colleague, Tank? Was he really still safe from the Oracle's prophecy? There were times when he stared into Morpheus's ageing face and was blinded by the lightning potential of the dead glaring back at him, boiling his eyeballs dry. It brought him nicely onto the level of the second possibility - was there still a danger? Was one of them going to die? Seriously this time?  
  
Finishing the bolt he had been labouring over, Neo turned and clambered into the seat nearest Trinity, mind bristling with possibility that should the session get intense, he could subconsciously flail out at her in a well- intended scratch. Patiently, they lay there a moment, gazing up at the ribbons of electricity that shimmered above their heads, thinking. The Nebuchadnezzar had been in a state of deterioration after a body of squidies, large pugnacious machines with the outward appearance of many- eyed metal polyps, had decided to launch an untimely assault on the ship, crushing one third of it in such a manner that it would take months, no doubt, to fix. A grim prospect, particularly when they were down on men.  
  
Slowly, the Neb came to lurch downwards, its legs clamping down on the ground with a force that shook the entire ship for a brief, uncomfortable moment. As it came to rest, there was a chalky clank from the helm, and Morpheus strolled out onto the deck. Spotting Trinity and Neo in the chairs, he settled down beside the first and slowly began to connect her.  
  
"Training?"  
  
"Just to let off some steam," explained Trinity, watching Neo squirm a little in his seat. His pallid hands were black with a combination of oil and grease, and some marks had even risen up onto his neck and chin in places.  
  
Morpheus nodded and turned from her, coming to crouch beside the major computer that lay at the very centre of the hacking network. Tapping in a command on the old worn keyboard, he waited for a 'bleep' from the terminal as means of a response, and stood up, satisfied, to resume 'plugging in' his fellow crew members.  
  
Trinity was thoroughly surprised at how quickly she had taught herself to recover from that piercing sensation that ran from the master socket at the junction of skull and spinal column to the brain every time they connected. Supposing it was little more than routine, she took in her new, artificial surroundings with the tender blindness of a child coming to terms with a new part of the 'world'.  
  
She and Neo were standing in an alley, tucked away from the central flow of all but the most foolish of men. Around them, barricading any escape, was a healthy crowd of twenty, maybe thirty spectators, vagabonds from the look of them. Some had rheumy, smoke-beaten eyes, others the absence of a limb, but all of them were heckling like insane baboons.  
  
Good old Morpheus.  
  
"Go on!" Trinity's sight lighted upon an old man with finger-less gloves and a makeshift cigarette of raw tobacco and newspaper jutting out from his purple lips, yelling louder than the rest, almost as if his life, for all it was worth, depended on it.  
  
"Go on, girl!" he thundered, a weak haze emerging from the end of his cigarette. "He just called you a hussy - you gonna' stand by and let him do that? Huh?"  
  
Trinity shot back to Neo, looking surprisingly like a grey-eyed bull. Neo seemed more unsteady than ever, and was now swinging back-and-forth on his steel-toed boots, his black trenchcoat quivering about him apologetically. He had eliminated an Agent in his time here, an achievement that none but he had the strength to accomplish, and yet Trinity was certainly the last person he should have liked to infuriate.  
  
"Hussy?"  
  
He knew he should have seen that lunge coming. Rolling away from the collision, he found himself being kicked repeatedly in the back by the jabbing claws of five screaming onlookers and flipped to his feet once more, the tails of his coat striking the attackers by their faces, drawing blood in some cases. Hussy or not, he resolved, she certainly wasn't going to put a good man down that easy.  
  
Adopting a fresh stance, he broke in with a well-judged cut that almost thrust her intestinal tract up into her shoulders. For a moment, she looked set to fall onto her spine, but instead took the rebound with her hands, aiming a lariat at Neo's throat. A quick dodge though, and her legs came down with an empty smash on the tarmac. Two male spectators roared with laughter.  
  
"Eh, I hope you do better on your back than you do fighting!" hollered one, before receiving a neat slug from Neo's right fist. The blast blew him back against the wall with such as force that about a dozen bricks were dislodged on impact.  
  
Unfortunately, this had provided sufficient enough a distraction to allow Trinity to regain her footing and plot a punch on Neo's skull with the approximate force (Matrix-wise) of a car travelling at 60 mph. Surprisingly, her colleague remained on two feet, instead echoing the exertion of her knuckles back onto her own breastbone with his head. The crowd howled tremendously.  
  
Neo was just about to strike again with a spinning high-kick, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that froze him to the spot. Trinity was encroaching on the execution of her own strategy when she saw it too, and lapsed into a still, horrified silence.  
  
About forty feet away from them, well outside of where the main bulk of the audience had been, one of the spectators was bent over double and appeared to be fizzling in and out of visibility, the space around her rippling and stretching like a loose sail in the wind. The crowd had spotted this quickly, and was already halfway down the alley, screaming wildly. Trinity started forward, but Neo restrained her with an arm.  
  
"There's enough voltage coming out of her to collapse an elephant," he hissed, pulling her down the backstreet by the elbow. "If you touch her, she's gonna' shock you dead twice over - go!"  
  
Trinity broke free of his grappling hold and ran straight-out at full pelt away from the woman. Neo followed without hesitation, discarding his coat to prevent further air resistance. As they streamed down into the main street, jostling at the pedestrians about them as tentative horses do at their first jump. Amidst barks of "Hey!" and "Watch where you're going!" Neo wrestled his cellphone from the narrow pocket of his trousers.  
  
"Morpheus!" he roared, pressing it to his cheek. "Get us out of here! Now!"  
  
In six seconds, both Neo and Trinity were yanked clear from the program, and awoke in the Real World to the desperate face of the captain.  
  
Neo cringed upwards onto his backside. "Something went-"  
  
"Wrong, I know." Morpheus swallowed his fear and pattered across the catwalk flooring back into the helm compartment. His crew followed anxiously. "While you were gone, the entire ship was pushed backwards on its rear stabilisers. Almost thrust us clean off the ground."  
  
"What could possibly do that?"  
  
"Probably a surge in the electromagnetic field. I've heard others talk about that sort of occurrence. Most of the time it just causes a malfunction in a ship's navigation and internal circuitry, but sometimes." Morpheus's voice, for once, seemed to fail him. "Well, it's managed to tear some vessels to pieces."  
  
"Then I wouldn't like very much to remain here." Trinity collapsed before the controls. "The Neb's already in a bad enough state as it is. What might send one ship crazy could well explode ours plate from plate."  
  
Morpheus nodded. "There's a great risk of that, I agree completely. Alright, take her out of here and we'll try to find a safer place to land."  
  
Trinity eagerly obeyed, pulling back on the stick before her. The Nebuchadnezzar groaned and cranked upwards, dislodging a few loose fragments of steel in its wake. At a good kilometre above the ground, she attempted to retract the four stabiliser legs, their iron hooves curving and tucking into the grooved armpits of the ship's stomach. One of them remained exposed though, its system apparently damaged, hanging out like a limp grey tongue. The lower leg jerked and swung a little on the 'knee' joint as the Neb reeled about. In its cyan wrapper, the vessel looked like an old toffee that had begun to melt out in sticky, tender waves.  
  
As the ship rumbled up towards the ribbed ceiling, Neo tightened his grip about the head of Morpheus's seat and pressed his head into the leather, using the seam to scratch an itch above his left ear.  
  
"I don't think it was just the ship that suffered because of that surge, Morpheus," he swallowed, eyes flickering down to the captain, perusing his expression side-on.  
  
"Oh no?" Morpheus did not move his head. He looked honestly more concerned with the Nebuchadnezzar's state than anything his charge had to say. "What else?"  
  
"Whilst we were in, one of the humans started to play up - real bad, you know?"  
  
At this, Morpheus came to meet Neo's thin chestnut eyes with a single larger, brown-silver one, chin rested upon his fist. "You mean in the same manner as when an Agent takes over?"  
  
"No," replied Neo, puzzled. "It was different - very different. The Matrix about this woman was, well, it was sort of tensing up, curving. You know, really going crazy. And she kept vanishing and re-appearing."  
  
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//disturbance. Someone has been breaking into the pods. //  
  
Sooner or later, the sabotage was bound to be noticed. Membrane after membrane had been discovered ripped and caved by the larger maintenance droids within the past hour, the humans beneath them either dead or struggling for the oxygen that now bubbled freely into the liquid protein coat about them from various ruptures in the major respiratory supply pipe whose tail encompassed both nose and mouth. On the outside, it seemed a rather foolish thing to do - after all, the machines of the Real World all depended on the energy outputted by their crops for consistent operation. To destroy the fields would be to commit mass murder, even on oneself. At the same time, there appeared to be something of a scheme, a routine to it all. That same cross-shaped tear, that same scorched incision in the master plug of each affected human. The beings responsible had obviously planned this, and planned well.  
  
The rumour screamed between the various droids that perhaps this had been the act of those renegade humans - the Unplugged. The machines were aware that several ships' worth had been buzzing around the Real World for aeons, spending their lives partly in the search for the lost city of Zion, partly in the retreat from squidies and the various other patrol cyborgs. Every now and again, these escapees unplugged another human, but the loss was so gradual that those of metal did not really care too much. Besides, it left them with surplus protein to feed to their other crops, which in turn produced more energy. However, a rapid decrease in humans, and the plant was certain to fall into a dangerous deficit of the very thing upon which production depended.  
  
No sooner had the revelation of this vandalism come to the attentions of the master droids had fleets of auxiliary troops been issued with the task of disembowelling any foreign ship they happened to stumble across during their patrol. Little did the human ships, including the steadily crumbling Nebuchadnezzar, know that even what they had determined as the 'safe zones' of the Real World were soon to be polluted with waves of soldiers from the enemy race. Within a few hours, there would be few chances to dock without having a cluster of machines, armed to the screws, swarming all over them.  
  
The first machines to disembark were the smaller ones. These resembled navy blue torpedoes with four legs that they could tuck up inside the major bodywork to make themselves more streamlined. These ran on minimum power, literally crumbs of energy, and were rather weak when summoned upon to attack. They worked best in packs, clinging onto their targets like harpoons, casting out collapsible needles from their midriffs to pound against the alloyed coating of the victim. Easily disposed of by either a few warning shots or complete obliteration, perhaps their most deadly asset was the unit released on their destruction - a small box that emitted a sphere of radiation capable of alerting larger reinforcements within a twenty mile radius.  
  
The medium-class machines were the squidies, the most common of all attack robots. Each one of their long, segmented tentacles carried a different tool: one a tracker, one a missile launcher, and so forth. From their undersides, they could emit high-power energy beams capable of collapsing lead. It was at the hands of such lasers that the Nebuchadnezzar had suffered much of its recent damage.  
  
The most extreme circumstances called upon the deploying of the most relentless of all militaries - the hydras. Each one was nothing more and nothing less than a mass of arms, even propelled by the use of weaponry. They consisted of a huge mobile bazooka cannon of a sort, from which seven heads bearing along their lengths ribbons of further barrels, with mine ports at the skull of each. Whereas the renegade ships might escape the other ranks' detection by merely switching off their electric systems, evading a hydra would be to imitate death - they could sense the tiny pulse of a human's heart even with their receptors directed away from it in entirely the opposite direction. Fortunately, only five hydras had been sent out. Unfortunately, that was far more than what was required for the task.  
  
//any human-operated ship must be eliminated. // The commands of the hydras were grim in their affirmation that justice would be returned to the power plant. //the core is depending upon our faculties to maintain its safety. //  
  
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Well, let's about it for now. Hope you guys liked it! Review! Go on! Review! Make me happy! Go on - uh, this whole monologue just carries on like this. Maybe you better just leave a comment before I go crazy by my own limited vocabulary. Continued soon! 


	2. Part Two: Clarity

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A/N: Thanks for the reviews, people! In response to the comment about that E-NORMOUS plot window in the first part (please don't hurt me, I'll fix it all up, I promise!), despite contradiction from the direct use of "training programs" in the text itself, Morpheus actually hacked into the Matrix itself and got Trinity and Neo caught up in an alley brawl. Sorry, it wasn't very clear at all, I know. I'll rewrite it some other time. That thing has put a whole blemish on the fic, but I hope people will learn to ignore that sloppiness. Sorry. This chapter should be better. I hope.  
  
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Disclaimer: Yeah, The Matrix isn't mine. You know, it's really quite straightforward. If I was the creator, I wouldn't be writing 'fanfiction'. 'Nuff said. Let's go off and eat some biscuits. Because I lurve biscuits. Particularly those ring ones with pink-and-white icing and a coat of suga-  
  
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REGULATION Part Two: Clarity  
  
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Neo awoke with a start. He was tangled up in the mesh of boiler pipes nearby his unrolled mattress, his sparse clothes alone saving his skin from any scalding by the tubes. Unable to believe he had thrust himself into them on purpose, he clambered away to examine his surroundings for clues.  
  
Everything had notably shifted to the right side of the room, accumulating up the wall in a number of cluttered piles he was sure Morpheus would not approve of should he come to see them making such a state of his ship.  
  
And speaking of the ship.  
  
The Nebuchadnezzar had taken a heavy blow, and certainly one it did not have need of. The attacker, currently invisible amongst the rifts of electricity pulsing about it and the ship, had struck a hard gash clean through the sacrificial metal cuticle usually so resistant to the probes and points of the military machines, peeling deep into the true bodywork, almost prising apart the ribbed casing of the helm. Apparently proud at the great scar it had inflicted, the droid fell to arranging itself juxtaposed unto the ship. Pressing its spiny belly against the Nebuchadnezzar's cheek, it began to shove and worry at the larger vessel, gradually cranking it up at an angle to such an extent that it was now passively mounting its shadowy opponent, inch-by-inch.  
  
It would have been further satisfied if, indeed, it had gained the profit of an awareness concerning the panic it had created within the Neb's creaking stomach. From his usual perch at the Matrix monitors, another crew member, a tan-skinned man, twinkling of eye, glowing of grin, and going by the name of Tank, had descended to the main deck, and was doing his best to prevent the complete collapse of the internal shell, with Morpheus acting rapidly as his aid. Meanwhile, Trinity was doing her utmost to dislodge the ship in its entirety from the vice of the machine, albeit to no avail.  
  
Presently, the attacker gained grip enough to turn the ship at a right angle to its usual state, sending its contents gliding to the left wall like so many plastic dolls in a child's toy boat. Again, Neo crashed headlong into the piping, this time searing his ear with such an excruciating pain that he gave a sharp yelp and pawed at the floor in an attempt to writhe his way up it.  
  
Mercilessly, the Neb continued to topple, weak as a flailing flower, upside- down, the very slowness of its motion bringing the worst of agonies to the crew. Morpheus and Tank had been fortunate enough to find the stalks of the connection chairs in sufficient time to save themselves the fall to the buzzing ceiling. Trinity had locked herself into her seat tensely, her feet braced beneath the chair powerfully. Neo meanwhile was on his back, sprawled over the ceiling.  
  
All of a sudden, as if the dog's master had summoned away his beast, the machine relieved its pressure and welled away from the Neb. Trinity grasped the fortune to see the elusive monster, identifying it as a lone squidie, retarded by the loss of a good five of its limbs, with a bleeding chunk drawn from its butt, no doubt by one of its more able fellows. Expressing an anxiety quite bereft of its order, it thundered unsteadily yet speedily away, leaving the Nebuchadnezzar stranded, turned on its head.  
  
A noisy current galloped through the tunnel. Morpheus mustered his first breath for a whole minute and nodded to Tank's addled face. Gingerly at first, but later with greater power, the Zion-born human swung his hips up about the chair, coming to hug its stem with both arms and legs. Morpheus was quick to follow suit, clambering into the more secure pose, the back of his skull pressed against the cold flooring.  
  
With a nasal groan, the Nebuchadnezzar began to swirl back onto its belly, thrusting its passengers into a moment of silent panic as they tried to right themselves in proper accordance. Failing this, Neo fell straight from ceiling to floor in a tidy heap of sore moans.  
  
When calm had been fully restored, Morpheus jogged up the ladder into the helm, Tank in close pursuit. On entering, they found Trinity melted into the front-most seat, her hands dropping softly from the controls. The captain shuffled past, pecking with an index finger upon a dark blue button that brought up an electric projection of their surroundings.  
  
"Squidie?" The usual culprit, he resolved.  
  
"Without a doubt." Trinity patted another control, and the projection appeared to pan out, absorbing a good sixty metres more of the tunnel within its scope. "We're not out of the woods yet, though. It'll be back pretty soon."  
  
"With reinforcements?"  
  
"Mmm. Probably why it left-"  
  
"We better get out of here," interrupted Tank apprehensively. His eyes sucked in the room with haste. "Where's Neo?"  
  
As if on cue, a dishevelled, shattered man emerged from the doorway, almost tripping over the step on account of the stutter of his footsteps. The attentions of the crew trailed to his person, and, blushing slightly at himself, Neo slid into one of the rear seats, dragging his feet in from the aisle.  
  
"What was that crap all about?" he demanded hoarsely. Morpheus and Tank found their seats, the latter swinging his chewed boots into the aisle with an air of sloth. "I didn't think there was much turbulence in this sector."  
  
"Not turbulence," corrected Trinity. "A squidie."  
  
"How-"  
  
"It's safe to say they've long been aware of our more secretive routes," chimed in Morpheus, gripping awkwardly at a nearby lever. "Trinity, take the ship back along the passage to one of the southern atria. Neo, you and I will revert to the Matrix. The machines' tightened security may have something to do with that fault you detected earlier. Tank - connect us then revive communication with any other ship within a ten-kilometre radius: tell them to be on their guard. "  
  
"Got it," grinned Tank, flipping to his feet and heading down the ladder in two giant bounds. Morpheus and Neo followed, leaving Trinity to reel the ship about: murmuring; trembling; shattering.  
  
=*=  
  
"Hacker ships, I repeat, all hacker ships - please respond!"  
  
Tank folded over slightly, fingers hugging the communicator in irritation, his head cocked keenly to one side, listening intently for anything of purpose above that static chatter. He had shifted his headset so that it occupied only his right ear, stretching his attention to both the workings of the Matrix and their cohorts in the Real World.  
  
"Hey Tank! Long time, no hear!"  
  
The man was delighted to pick up the throaty tones of another Unplugged. He recognised the voice immediately as being that of Dolam, the thirty-year- captain of their sister ship, the Belshazzar*. Disconnected from the Matrix at the tender age of five, he had become well accustomed to the Real World and its dangers, bearing something of a sixth sense for detecting the machines' attack forces. Tank dwelled that if it were not for his excessive unplugging of rather randomly selected humans, he might be as good an authority as Morpheus. As it was, Tank had been asked prior to his recruitment to join the swollen crew of the Belshazzar, but having noted the comparatively skeleton clutch aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, Tank had been quick to assign himself to their loyalties.  
  
"Dolam, great to know you're still around. Just calling on behalf of Morpheus to warn you the machines have closed in. Pass the message on and all that jazz."  
  
"Way ahead of you. They've been racing after us for hours. Half of us haven't got a wink of sleep lately."  
  
"Sounds about right. I'd better leave you to it then. Spread the world, Bel."  
  
Rupturing the connection, Tank sighed and curled back in his seat, brushing the receiver over his lips. He was reluctant to admit it, but Morpheus, as he often was, could well be right. The Bel had been detected at least nine kilometres away - the thought that entire squadrons of attack machines could scale this breadth without any dwindling of their power, without any impediment to their chasing of the human-led ships, was quite simply terrifying. Terrifying, but more probably, berserk, so great was the risk of malfunction at this distance from the core. Mainly to their discredit, the fighting cyborgs processed energy at an alarming rate.  
  
"Something's up," Tank muttered.  
  
=*=  
  
Neo twitched.  
  
The temptation to remind Morpheus of the Agents' constant vigil over the Matrix was burning at his brain, and yet his immense respect for the man restrained him. The captain seemed far-drawn in his task to detect any violent electric pulses or disappearances - so much so that he appeared to have forgotten the presence of their major enemy whilst plugged in. Standing atop the roof of a fairly low warehouse, he had taken to a one- kneed stoop, dark eyes scanning the currents beneath for a single irregularity.  
  
"What do you think it could be?"  
  
"Hopefully only a glitch." Both of them knew well that the machines frequently found 'fault' with their perverted game and consequently edited it to their temperamental preferences.  
  
"Didn't look it, Morpheus. Damn well didn't look it."  
  
On hearing this, his superior turned slightly to glare at him, and burnt to a blush, Neo returned his gaze to the Plugged below. There they were - toys to their own creation. Over-thrown and ridiculed, these humans' legacy had been torn like wings from an eagle, sending them, degenerates, plummeting into an ocean of despair. The very thought of it saturated Neo with a boiling fury, and a desire that Morpheus had weaned him off the Matrix sooner to save him from the disgusting truth that had made him the fool all this time.  
  
They did not have to wait long though. For at that very moment, a localised body of humans fizzled quietly and vanished, the manner considerably neater than before, when many had died under the immense currents collapsing about the bizarre victim. Unfortunately for the Unplugged, the displaced bulk left a hole even its peers could not ignore, and their task increased in ardour as a result.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"Did you see that?"  
  
"They just disappeared!"  
  
With a communal sigh, Neo and Morpheus slipped off the roof, feet-first, the impact against the pavement minor to them. Running towards the void, which was even now slowly filling with curious onlookers daring to step into an invisible lion's den, they shouldered several rows out of the way and skidded into the clearing. The crowd's attention, thankfully, was thrust upon them.  
  
"People, people!" shouted Neo, raising his hands to settle them. His face became painted with a forced grin. "It's obvious the findings of our surveys have been secured. If you'll all bear with my colleague and I, we will explain the situation fully."  
  
As the hubbub reluctantly resided, Neo nodded to Morpheus, who cursed him beneath his breath and drew the alibi to a nervous conclusion.  
  
"The city's water supply has been polluted with a minor hallucinogenic substance by a group of youngsters who have now been placed under police custody. Do not be afraid - we have filtered the entire system and any negative effects will probably fade by next week at the very latest. This goes to explaining your collective notion of what has just happened; but there is no need to be alarmed." As he and Neo backed away, he faded into expressions of pretentious pleasantry. "God be with you, good health, everything is alright."  
  
"We've got a problem on our hands," his companion muttered as they marched away to the nearest public telephone.  
  
"Indeed. Our first priority is to find out what the cause of all this is, and soon." Morpheus's attention steered back towards the gradually dispersing crowd. "Two-bit excuses aren't going to convince an entire population for long."  
  
=*=  
  
Trinity was sure she wasn't due south anymore.  
  
The lower regions of the chartered Real World were less regimented than this. Here - wherever here was - there were fans of tunnels, all with the exact same course, channelling the traffic of several small maintenance droids and the odd torpedo attack machine, which by itself posed no immediate threat. Trinity had thus concluded that either the south had become unusually overrun, or that she was in fact moving the Neb towards the core.  
  
Presently, Morpheus and Neo hopped into the helm beside her. Trinity's stomach purred in their company, as if embracing a wonderful security blanket. She was externally bitter, casting off most affection, coyness and even enjoyment for the sake of her reputation: dominance. Yet despite this, she would admit to herself time-after-time that she greatly loved the intimacy of others over loneliness. To her, it donated a safety grander than any self-sufficiency, any attempt at becoming the immortal 'independent woman', could ever achieve.  
  
But it shattered like thin ice.  
  
"Trinity," droned Morpheus, sitting himself down beside her. "Where are we?"  
  
"I - I'm not sure. The course was set south, but."  
  
"Morpheus," whispered Neo, glimpsing a crab-like droid hover past starboard, "we're in the core."  
  
Rocking on a strong electromagnetic current that surged up behind it from apparently nowhere, the Nebuchadnezzar drifted through into a new chamber. A chamber all three of them were overly familiar with.  
  
Before them, stretched as far as the eye could, or desired to, see, lay a jet-black ocean of pipes and gutters, from which a million billion orange- red humps extended outwards, scales on the massive oil-slicked dragon. The breath was at once stolen from Neo's lungs.  
  
They were sitting in the middle of a human field.  
  
"Oh, dear God." Trinity could have shot herself - not for the ship, but for the poor humans all around. If the attack droids closed in now, the untimely explosion of the Neb would crush at the very least a healthy three percent of the pods (a surprisingly large quota), leaving the humans within torn crudely apart, head and vertebrae to remain connected to the wall, limp. The very thought caused the woman to wretch.  
  
Disgruntled, she flew into a flurry of animation, ripping at various levers and buttons. "Alright, I'm backing out."  
  
"No," hissed Morpheus hoarsely, his lips buried in his knuckles. "Wait for just a second. I want to see what they do."  
  
To Neo and Trinity, this sounded like a death wish. Surely it was rather inevitable! A scout, most likely a torpedo machine, would appear, register them, and then scurry away to fetch allies. By that time, it was far too late to even consider escape: the forces had both the speed and tenacity to finish the ship off in seven minutes flat.  
  
"Come on, Morpheus." Trinity was standing up now.  
  
"Wait!" Then, realising his tone: "To our best knowledge, the Agents and the control over human minds came about as a result of the machines: they are all-powerful, and I think they may be at the root of the problem."  
  
As if to compliment the captain's speech, a small white arachnid cyborg pattered onto the rim of a nearby pod, seemingly unaware of the gigantic ship floating quietly nearby. Throats bristling with terror, they watched as it jumped down onto the membrane, steadied its footing, and threw up its fat head in an airy howl far above the human hearing range.  
  
"Pick up its frequency and lower it," ordered Morpheus. Trinity silently obeyed, her mouth dry. The radio chirped and wailed, before dropping to a reasonable level. The crew reclined in their seats.  
  
"Listen to it."  
  
//almost in. Are the others ready? //  
  
The arachnid's 'voice' was shrill and tinny, even with its pitch considerably reduced. The artificiality was the most over-whelming feature of it, however, sending the congregation's hairs- on end as it hummed and buzzed helplessly, trying to reach a state of harmony.  
  
//yes. // Another call caused the Neb's crew to jump in shock - this one was deeper and, if it were possible, more eerie than the first: a sort of raucous moan that clung to the 's' in its phrase, drawing it out in a serpentine hiss.  
  
This being said, the arachnid set to work, digging into the pod membrane with oscillating jaws. As it undid the skin in two ravaged gashes, its snake-voiced assistant, peered up behind it. This cyborg was easily twice the size of the Nebuchadnezzar, and consisted of a screw-shaped head of fibreglass-like plating with a curtain of tubular arms extending from its lower half downwards. Each arm was the casing for a high-power suction device about the mouth of which four toes stuck out, flickering slightly.  
  
The moment the arachnid tasted success, the larger machine closed one broad foot over the pod and plucked it cleanly from amongst the other 'crops'. Then, to the Neb's horror, it crushed the glass and let the human within slip, unplugged, into its full grasp. The animal's skin was perforated with small shards of its vessel but the machine did not appear to care, instead stabilising it roughly between its fingers and coiling its arm up until the weakly kicking body was pressed into its chest-plate. The spider robot was nowhere to be seen.  
  
The steel behemoth quivered and swung away from the pods once more, arms first, still clutching its clawing prize. Frozen to his seat at the helm of the Neb, Morpheus choked.  
  
"They're unplugging humans. By their own decision."  
  
=*=  
  
*A.N./ Those of you who are Christians may be aware that Nebuchadnezzar was a Babylonian king accounted for in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. A later monarch went by the name of Belshazzar, thus I have chosen for this to be the title of the Neb's sister ship. Perhaps the later films will somehow highlight upon this - I don't know.  
  
-A.N./ Okay, so technically Morpheus doesn't have any hair - look, will you give the poor guy a break!?  
  
=*=  
  
Tadaa! Another chapter finished! If any of you read this, can you be so nice as to review it? I'm no great writer, but I spend ages trying, so if you wouldn't mind making 'ages' seem worthwhile.  
  
Woah: I sound so measly. Well, nothing new there.  
  
R + R please! I'm not going to be satisfied until I've finished this fic, so a new chapter will be coming soon. 


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